Got an email from prison the other day.

It was one of the heroin kids. Who knew they had email in prison? And who knew there was an app for that! Called JPAY. With that…you know some Stanford kid’s summer house and retirement fund has been cemented in stone. Also—when in my life did I ever think I would be corresponding with a prisoner— in any way, shape or form….and not for a story I was writing or producing.

It was my roomie, Alex, from Seabrook, the boy of 20, who for 28 days was the Vice President of the Save Brian Club in that blizzardy winter in the Jersey netherlands near Philly two years ago.

His little dispatch had quite a kick. With a devastating blow. Thanks but no thanks….it screamed rather bitchily with a hyper-nasty smart ass aftertaste. That fantastic pill Strattera (that ADHD-impulse weakening drug I blogged about few chapters back) earned its FDA approval in my case that very instant. Preventing me from deleting that email…as well as the JPAY account and the laptop I was reading it on…in addition to the window I was about to throw that laptop through. (Translation: A broken window is a deleted window..and a deleted laptop is a mini-Macbook air that falls several stories to the ground thru the aforementioned deleted windowpane).

Not to worry…Strattera deleted that reaction from history because it didn’t happen. Instead, I somehow eked out a short semi-curt: “Good luck with everything.” response. Ha!

The last time we heard from Alex (on this blog and in real life) I found him in a halfway house where he fought to stay clean and sober. But a halfway house in Camden, New Jersey is like the front reception desk of Hades. Clean streak ended, with an expected relapse notched into his veins, Alex headed back to state prison where he remains confident he’ll collect several months of heroin free living. He feels its easier for him to stay sober there. Problem is….you can’t stay in prison forever…and no… sorry … not even after your sentence finishes! And whoever dreamed of writing ThIS sentence: “Stop using state prison as a crutch!”

What started this hullaballoo? My JPAY email TO him greeted with the return nasty-gram had simply made a suggestion to have an after-prison after-care plan of Sober living. He had written that he wanted to get away from South Jersey to California or Oregon. Normally, pulling a “geographic” is not recommended in early sobriety. However I think the Armageddon-scape of South Jersey’s dope decimation is an exception. Particularly for the young people. A strong sober community somewhere else ain’t a bad idea.

I also told him how I have embraced the uniquely miraculous group therapy and fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and its Twelve Steps program of a spiritual-like self-realization and an evolving improvement and way of living. And learning. Because …like with everything else in life, we are always learning. I wasn’t recruiting…simply clueing him in on my enlightenment..like in the kind of conversations we had way back as we emerged from the darkness of addiction and alcoholism….the whisper laden nights of detox. Helping another addict or alcoholic keeps one sober. Thats how it works.

The JPAY smackback acknowledged my success…but he claimed AA renders the “powers of an individual’s mind useless”….and that leaders of these fellowships are “charlatans espousing stolen wisdom.” His mini tirade rambled at me with fancy words (including one or two I had to Google). But big words couldn’t hide his disdain for the only tried and true treatment for addiction. Scientific research and decades of sobriety attest to it. But it won’t work if the patient isn’t willing. He also countered my suggestion that drinking alcohol or smoking marijuana would be detrimental to a recovering heroin addict. Science says it. I say it. He’s lived it. But somehow he thanked me for the advice and told me to go to hell at the same time.

It broke my heart and raged my brain and blood pressure. The reason why I take this so seriously is because many of these heroin kids don’t make it…and so many of them are dying. About 6 or 7 of the kids in my 28 day group of 98 alcoholics and addicts have died these last two years. Erased from the Earth because of a by product of the beautiful poppy…a murderous red flower that is an evil torpedo from the other side of the Earth and is cratering this country with death, anguish and shame. (Yes I like to pack as many words into a sentence that is legally possible but since its my blog…its my law.)

Team Brian Superhero, my psychotherapist Judith Fraser says “Let them die, Brian”. She says I can’t get distracted by the sobriety of others nor invest more of myself in Alex’s quagmire. I cannot change the actions of others. The most difficult component to addiction is realizing that it is behavior that needs to change despite the thought process that links the mind and body in its obsession and attraction to the drug or drink.

There’s nothing anyone can do but love, inform and give them the tools to climb out of their Fatal Attraction.

Just as I was down to my last prayer for Alex….another email from him.

His last JPAY dispatch was like a sign from God…with the spiritual undertone that longtime sober people speak of.

“Brian: I value you….I had no right to talk to you that way…please take my “misanthropic rant” impersonally. You’re still valuable to me.”

Ok Alex…I will. After I Google what misanthropic means. And Alex..I’ll never give up on you. Nor any of the heroin kids I so love.